15. Chapter 15

fifteen

Lucas

A ny delusions I was entertaining disappeared in the space of a millisecond. I felt the ice of her cold demeanor spreading through my veins, reaching the center of my chest where her fingers still lingered.

She seemed to realize that at the same moment because those fingers gripped my shirt, pushing me farther away from her, closer to the door. She released me to swing the door back open. She was really kicking me out.

I dragged my feet, holding onto the doorframe.

“Athena. I’m sorry for what I said about your mother.”

“You should be. She’s done nothing to make you suspicious. And she had cancer, asshole. You accused a cancer patient of…I don’t even know what you were trying to accuse her of.”

Fraud? Forgery? I didn’t know either, I was just fishing for information. Obviously I was fishing in the wrong lake, and I ruined every possibility in the process .

When did we start to have something to ruin? Why did I care so much when she finally slammed the door—metaphorically and physically—on me?

Fidelity, bravery, integrity.

Whether I liked it or not, I gave her my word. I left. I had to keep my promises.

The car ride home wasn’t even a blur—it felt nonexistent. I couldn’t remember a second of it, my mind on autopilot until I was unlocking my apartment door. I placed my briefcase on the desk in my office, wondering if I could focus on any work or if I’d just keep seeing that hurt expression on her face…or the toned legs coming from under that towel, just barely long enough to cover her ass and—

I cut off that line of thought, thinking about a different promise I could keep. I pulled out the news article my mom gave me, figuring if I couldn’t work I could at least cross this “lead” off the list.

Local Lawyer Saves Dying Restaurant

I scoffed once I got into the article itself.

Angelo Morelli of all people, bought a failing Italian restaurant a year ago for his ten-year wedding anniversary with his wife. I rolled my eyes. Even now I couldn’t get away from the Morellis.

She was an okay cook, Angelo said, but he wanted her to learn the chef’s recipe book so she could be even better. Now the restaurant happened to be thriving, so the Chronicle wrote a heart-warming human interest piece on it, as if any of the Morelli men had a heart.

I scanned the rest of the article, but nothing stood out—for my case or Dani’s. It was just as I knew it would be. Useless. But Mom put herself through this at least once a month, thinking she found something.

Now the Morellis were messing with my Mom, even if they hadn’t meant to, and I had a new focus. I could do the fucking work. I could focus on taking them down. I took out my laptop, slamming it down on my table a little harder than necessary, and turned it on.

I needed to cross all my T’s and dot all my I’s, so I started by emailing again for the surveillance footage. These men needed to know that I meant business and I was tired of waiting. Then I looked up Margaret Keenan’s death certificate.

Oh God.

She had an aggressive form of liver cancer, but her actual cause of death was related to an untreated blood clot in her lung that caused her to have a fall. The clot was listed as a symptom of the cancer—probably a side effect of the drugs she was taking—and I felt bad for Athena all over again. I couldn’t imagine losing my mom the way she lost hers.

But then I circled back from the empathy to pure anger because none of this would have been a problem—I never would have questioned any of it—if she had just been honest and answered my questions from the start. I wasn’t just being nosy, I was conducting a criminal investigation, trying to put very bad people behind bars before they hurt other, more innocent people .

I was a freaking knight in shining armor, trying to save the day, but Athena couldn’t see that. She just wanted to paint me as a bad guy.

I wanted throw everything off my desk, smash it all to the floor, but even in my swirling emotions I was aware of my surroundings. My oath of fidelity to the FBI wouldn’t allow me to damage their government issued hardware.

I carefully closed the laptop, putting it away in my briefcase. I paused, debating how to let out my aggression.

I could throw all the papers and pens and everything else to the floor now without guilt, but then I’d just have to reorganize everything later. Getting angry for a moment wasn’t worth all the effort to put everything right afterward.

And just like that my control was back. I was in charge of my body and my emotions again.

Anything to get out of doing chores, Lukie , I could practically hear Dani’s voice as she teased me when I was a teenager.

I was doing all this so I could find out what happened to her. How she died. Maybe if I was lucky I’d find her body so we could put her to rest, but the real, achievable goal was to stop other families from going through the same mess I did.

I took a deep breath and removed my laptop from the briefcase again, opening it up and turning it back on.

I took another deep breath while I waited for my email to load. Still nothing back from the difference surveillance feeds. I took a third deep breath before settling in to do the mountain of paperwork that piled up while I was following Athena around.

I kept busy catching up on the brainless work for a few hours, though I obsessively checked my email every few minutes .

Almost as if the two men were in league with each other, both emails appeared in my inbox, timed within two minutes of each other just as my office started to darken. I flipped on my desk lamp and opened the one from Mark’s guy in vice first, Nando Crevallo, the one who was investigating Lombardi for his own, separate case.

Blake,

Sorry for the delay. I’ve had other work to keep me busy and away from my desk, but here’s the batch of photos from when Lombardi was released from prison on Monday night. If nothing else maybe we can identify her and get some new charges filed against him. I haven’t had a chance to finish processing the photos from the rest of the week so far, but I’ll get them to you ASAP once they’re done. This should get you started.

-Det. Fernando Crevallo, Vice

“About fucking time,” I grumbled, downloading the files. I tapped my fingers impatiently on the desk while the computer scanned for viruses—you could never be too careful when working with sensitive documents—and then finally opened the folder and began clicking through the pictures.

I could see Leo Lombardi through a window. He was in a grungy, shitty apartment wearing one of those annoyingly bright silk shirts, blue this time, texting on his phone. I wondered why this photo was included. There was no point in knowing he was texting in his apartment unless we could see the text, know what was being said. I clicked over to the next photo .

A close up of his phone screen. There. That was better, except it showed he was just on a dating app, trying to hook up. I shuddered, wondering what kind of woman would see his profile picture and agree to a date. I clicked through.

Now Leo was standing, walking to his front door. I checked the timestamp on the photo. About an hour had passed since the last photo. Someone must have responded and was desperate enough to want to come over right away.

The next series of photos were opportunity shots, the photographer enabling the “spray and pray” technique, taking dozens of pictures, hoping one of them would work out. The door half open, fully open, etc. Leo’s body blocked his date, but I could catch a hint of legs and a bright blue dress. How cute, they matched.

The next set of photos showed the woman wrapped up in Lombardi’s arms, making out. I rolled my eyes. Why would I care about this? It felt like I was looking at shitty porn, especially as I could see Leo’s hand gripping her ass, fingers reaching under her trashy short skirt to some very inappropriate places. I clicked to the next picture in disgust.

Her hand was on his chest, head inclined toward the tiny, dirty kitchen. Big deal. My finger was on the mouse pad, ready to click to the next picture when I noticed it. My eyes snapped back to the woman’s face.

It was Athena. This woman was Athena and this must have been her short date with Lombardi, but it was clearly going a lot differently than she’d said.

I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I could hardly breathe. Did I want to see the rest of the pictures? I glanced at the corner of the screen. There were only a few more. How bad could it get? I needed to do my job. I could focus on Lombardi, ignore her. He was my quarry, not her. She might have really bad taste in men—may have lied to me again—but her lie wasn’t a potential felony, just in poor taste. I needed to see what he was doing that made the Detective Crevallo think these photos might be able to bring additional charges against Lombardi.

They moved over to the couch, Athena with a glass of water. Gross. I personally wouldn’t want to eat or drink anything out of that kitchen, but that was just me. Obviously she didn’t care about any of that.

I hurried through the next couple photos: them making out on the sofa, Lombardi’s body suddenly the only one visible over the top of the couch, Athena clearly laying down under him. Thank god I couldn’t see the details of what was going on from their waists down.

But then the next picture caught Athena’s arm mid-swing, that same glass of water in her hand, aiming for Lombardi’s head. Oh shit. What the hell was going on?

Lombardi sitting upright, looking shocked. Athena sitting upright, one arm across her chest covering where the dress was clearly pulled haphazardly across her body—I tried not to stare at the curves of her breasts or imagine what all her fingers were covering—the other arm mid swing again, this time letting her fist fly toward his face. I remembered that shiner he was sporting the following afternoon at the station and felt a sense of triumph.

My girl knocked his fucking ass out .

Not that she was my girl. It was just a sense of pride. And she clearly did knock him out, because the following picture only had Athena sitting up on the couch. Another showed her standing, smoothing down her dress. Another with her hands on those same tits, adjusting herself in the dress, another with those delicate fingers on the strap of the dress, pulling it back up her smooth, tanned shoulder. I gulped. This really was starting to feel like porn.

I checked the screen again, only one more picture. I clicked forward, but the last picture just showed her leaving the building. Why was that important?

Oh. The timestamp for the photo of her leaving was seventeen minutes after the previous one. What was she doing in there for seventeen minutes?

Why was she there in the first place? If she didn’t want to hook up with him why did she even show up, dressed to kill? If she wasn’t down to fuck, why did she let him kiss her and touch her like that? What happened that made her change her mind and clock him?

What the hell was she doing for the remaining seventeen minutes before she left?

What I saw in the photos was a shock. It hit deep, feeling a lot like betrayal even if I had no official reason to feel that way, but it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t illegal to meet someone to hook up, change your mind, and put them in their place when they didn’t want to take no for an answer. I was pissed, but I was never planning on seeing Athena again so her actions shouldn’t—didn’t—matter to me. I would just email Crevallo back and tell him who Athena was so he could follow up about Leo Lombardi’s assault on her.

It took a lot of effort, but I stayed on task.

I moved on to the second email containing relevant surveillance videos from outside of the Morelli law offices.

Nobody was monitoring the van in person after its initial setup; it acted as a beacon, a place where the nearby cameras could transmit their videos, the footage collected daily and monitored by someone on our task force for anything that could be of use. This was the email I’d been waiting for.

I popped open the video attachment, seeing the feed from the camera set up to peer into the glass front of Morelli & Morelli, Attorneys at Law. And who should I see entering, but Athena fucking Kane.

I checked the timestamp: it was Wednesday morning, right before I saw her in the neighborhood. That liar was in the area for a damn good reason: fucking us all over. I pressed play, wanting to memorize every detail for when I threw my clear-cut evidence back in her face. I watched her shake hands with Carlo Morelli, was greeted more stiffly by Angelo, and the three of them headed into a back room.

The video ended abruptly, and I quickly clicked to the next one, time-stamped forty-two minutes later. Athena exited the back room with the men, accepting a very European goodbye from Carlo with a kiss on each cheek, and a thoroughly American harassment of a pinch on the behind. After seeing her interaction with Lombardi I expected her to deck him, but she just gave him a playful smack on the shoulder before giving a final wave and walking out .

My mouth dropped open in shock.

Was Athena fucking Carlo Morelli, too? If not, why else was she there? With both men. She was in the back with them for almost an hour. What the hell was going on in there? Why did she lie to me over and over and over again? This betrayal hurt in a different way, but I could do something about this one. I wouldn’t let this one go. Not this time.

I couldn’t answer all my questions, but I knew someone who could. And she was going to answer them this time. From an interrogation room if need be.